NAPANOCH — No more legal obstacles stand between Walmart and their proposed 132,000-square-foot store on the Napanoch Valley Mall site.

New York state’s highest court refused Tuesday to hear an appeal from ShopRite and a Wawarsing citizens’ group to halt the project based on environmental, traffic and community character concerns. ShopRite has a store in Wawarsing, a mile down Route 209 from the proposed Walmart site.

Neither ShopRite nor Walmart responded to requests for comment.

A state Appellate Court panel ruled in favor of Walmart in March, concurring with an earlier state Supreme Court ruling. The Court of Appeals rarely takes cases in which the two lower courts have reached the same decision.

“I’m disappointed that the courts took the easy way out,” said Steven Krulick of Wawarsing-Ellenville for Responsible Development, which joined ShopRite in the lawsuit.

Krulick, a former Ellenville trustee, said Walmart will sap revenue from local supermarkets, pharmacies and hardware stores, forcing many of them out of business.

“I don’t see new businesses coming in knowing that they’ll have to compete with a behemoth,” he said.

“I hope the existing businesses will stay and expect Walmart will provide jobs to people who have had trouble finding work,” he said.

Tso expects to sell his property to Walmart for $5.5 million within three weeks. He purchased the land for $3 million in 1999, but will only break even due to maintenance and insurance costs on the largely vacant mall.

Distel expects construction to start in July on a smaller shopping plaza for the four mall businesses still in operation. The Napanoch post office will need to be relocated to the new site over the Nov. 11 Veterans Day Weekend.

After that, the abandoned mall will be demolished and a new structure for Walmart go up in its wake. The store is scheduled to open in November 2012, Distel said, and will provide roughly 250 full- and part-time jobs with pay starting at more than $10 per hour.